was a money-changer. His circumstances kept improving until he was appointed vizier to Bahāʾ al-Dawlah ibn ʿAḍud al-Dawlah. He amassed enormous wealth and built a splendid mansion known as the Fakhriyyah, a property that had originally belonged to the Caliph al-Muttaqī li-Allah. Upon it he lavished vast sums and copious outlays. He was generous, open-handed, and unsparing, constantly giving in charity; on one occasion he clothed a thousand needy people in a single day. He was also devoted to prayer and was the first to distribute sweets on the night of mid-Shaʿbān. Yet he leaned toward Shiʿism. In the present year Sultan al-Dawlah put him to death in Ahwāz and seized a great part of his fortune—more than 600,000 dinars apart from his real estate, jewels, furnishings, and other effects. He was fifty-two years old, plus a few months, when he was killed.

It is said that his ruin came about as follows: a certain man was slain by one of the vizier’s slaves. The victim’s wife sought redress from the minister and submitted several petitions, but he ignored them all. One day she said to him, “Minister, do you see the petitions I have placed before you and yet you disregard them? I have now placed them before Allah—exalted is He—and I await His decree upon them.” When the vizier was arrested he remarked, “By Allah, the woman’s petition has indeed been endorsed.” What befell him thereafter is known.

Then the year 408 AH began.

In it a fierce riot erupted in Baghdad between the Sunnis and the Rawāfiḍ (Shiʿah), and many people from both sides were killed.

That same year Abū al-Muẓaffar ibn Arslān-Khāqān captured Transoxiana and other lands, assuming the honorific Sharaf al-Dawlah after the death of his brother Ṭaghān Khān. Ṭaghān Khān had been a cultivated and upright man who loved the people of knowledge and religion. On one of his campaigns against the Turks he killed 200,000 fighters, captured 100,000 more, and carried off quantities of gold and silver vessels and Chinese porcelain the like of which no one had ever seen. When he died, Turkic rulers overran the eastern provinces.

In Jumādā I of that year Abū al-Ḥusayn Aḥmad, son of Muhaḏḏab al-Dawlah Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Naṣr, succeeded his father over the marshlands of al-Baṭāʾiḥ. His cousin fought him, defeated him, and beat him to death; his tenure there was thus brief, and he too was soon killed. The territory then passed to Sultan al-Dawlah, lord of Baghdad.

During the same year the Dailamite power in Baghdad waned, emboldening the commoners against them. They withdrew to Wāsiṭ, whose inhabitants, together with the Turks, fought them.

That year also saw the accession of Nūr al-Dawlah Abū al-ʿAz Dubays ibn Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Mazīd upon the death of his father.